Honoring Our Legacy; Inspiring Our Future

Introduction

Since the days of Benjamin Franklin and the post road surveyors, the role of postal inspector has greatly expanded. Today, the Postal Inspection Service enforces nearly 200 federal statutes related to crimes involving the U.S. Mail and postal system and is responsible for safeguarding every aspect of the mail, along with Postal Service employees and customers.

9/11 Church Street Station

One part of that duty is responding to natural disasters and acts of terrorism that impact the nation and the mailstream. Perhaps the most notable of these occurred on September 11, 2001, when members of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network crashed commercial planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City, the U.S. Pentagon building outside of Washington, D.C., and a field near Shanksville, PA. The terrorist attacks were the deadliest in United States history, killing almost 3,000 people and injuring thousands more.

The Church Street Station Post Office in New York City sat on the street corner near the World Trade Center’s twin towers and received a massive amount of damage. Postal inspectors were among the first law enforcement agents on the scene of the devastating event, helping bring people to safety and recovering mail. In the aftermath of 9/11, postal inspectors responded to multiple bomb threats around the country, investigated charity scams targeting the good will of people wanting to help impacted families, and assisted the FBI, FAA, and FEMA, all while restoring postal delivery routes affected by the attacks.(35)

Anthrax and the Amerithrax Task Force

Just one month after the 9/11 attacks, the Postal Inspection Service was given a new task to investigate — mailed letters containing the deadly anthrax bacteria, addressed to elected officials and media personalities. The letters contained language like that used by Al-Qaeda and were mailed from New Jersey. Concerns grew when Robert Stevens, a photojournalist, fell ill and succumbed to the infection left by the inhalation of anthrax. Soon after his death, more people became ill and died from anthrax exposure, including Washington, D.C., postal employees Joseph Curseen and William Morris.(36)

The letters stopped in October 2001, but the investigation was far from over. Ten postal inspectors joined with 17 FBI agents to form the “Amerithrax Task Force. They were able to determine that the letters likely were mailed from Princeton, NJ.(37)

Despite containing language similar to that used by members of Al-Qaeda, the task force determined the culprit was an American scientist.

In 2006, Dr. Bruce Irvins, a bacteriologist working with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases — who had worked with the Amerithrax Task Force for five years — was investigated for his alleged involvement. While he maintained his innocence until his suicide in 2008, the investigation formally closed in 2010.(38) New evidence has continuously transpired leading the FBI to believe in Dr. Irvins guilt in the Anthrax attacks.

Operation Protect Veterans

By the mid to late 2010’s, postal inspectors began to combat highly sophisticated scams, including schemes targeting veterans, counterfeit stamps, fraud, and drug trafficking.

The Postal Inspection Service partnered in 2017 with AARP to launch “Operation Protect Veterans.” The campaign included an increase in public service announcements to protect veterans from mail scams that deviously spoke to the commonly felt concerns of veterans, like loneliness, memorials of fallen friends, or scams regarding veterans’ benefits. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service continues to empower veterans with the information they need to protect themselves from these harmful scams.

In 2017, postal inspectors began investigating the classified advertising website Backpage.com, which facilitated prostitution through its “Adult Services” listings. The investigation disclosed that several millions of dollars of USPS money orders from around the U.S. had been paid to Backpage by sex traffickers. Inspectors also discovered that, since its inception in 2004, the company had laundered an estimated $500 million in prostitution-related proceeds and was operating websites in 97 countries.

The company’s owners pleaded guilty of conspiracy to facilitate prostitution and to commit money laundering. In August 2024, two were sentenced to 10 years in prison, and a third was sentenced to five years.

Drug Trafficking and The Darknet

The Inspection Service has also long fought to keep illegal drugs and other dangerous substances out of the mail. In recent years, our priority on that front has been stopping the flow of deadly synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl.

In 2018, postal inspectors began investigating a Darknet vendor named “Ghost831” for advertising oxycodone for sale on the internet. Unknown to his customers, the oxycodone tablets they purchased and received through the mail contained the far more potent fentanyl. Several people overdosed, with at least one fatality. Postal inspectors identified Jacob Matthew Medina as “Ghost831” and arrested him. In 2022, he was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.

Today, postal inspectors continue to conduct investigations to dismantle drug trafficking organizations and works vigilantly with state and local law enforcement to stem the flow of illegal drugs entering the mailstream.

Counterfeit Stamps

The Postal Inspection Service has fought many iterations of counterfeit stamp sales and production over 250 years. Beginning in the 1890s, crime rings in Chicago began forging stamps to “create” money, and organized crime rings mimicked these early counterfeiting efforts well into the 1940s.

Today, counterfeit stamps are most often produced in foreign countries, like China, and then distributed on different online platforms at significant discounts. Without knowing, people purchase counterfeit stamps and use them, which leads to revenue loss for the Postal Service. Postal inspectors work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to identify cargo shipments that contain counterfeit stamps prior to entering the country. Catching the counterfeit stamps at this point in their illegal journey both denies entry to the illegal goods and gives postal inspectors the opportunity to identify and investigate the recipients.

Postal inspectors also work alongside various eCommerce platforms to halt the sale of counterfeit stamps before innocent victims can purchase the false product. In some instances, entire web sites and eCommerce platforms are created for the sale of counterfeit stamps. The Postal Inspection Service works to shut those sites down.

In one investigation by postal inspectors, a woman from Southern California pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States Postal Service out of more than $150 million by using counterfeit stamps to ship tens of millions of packages.

Covid-19 Pandemic

During the national Covid-19 pandemic, postal inspectors investigated many cases of people defrauding the Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loans, which were made available to small businesses to help supplement wages during the period of national closure. In one instance, a wrecked Lamborghini led postal inspectors to the identity of a fraudster named David Hines. In 2020, Hines greatly exaggerated the number of employees in his small landscaping business and applied for a $13 million PPP loan to cover the fictitious payroll. He received close to $4 million prior to Bank of America identifying his fraud and freezing his accounts. Hines lied about the number of employees he had, and used the funds for personal expenses, including the purchase of a bright blue Lamborghini.

Project Safe Delivery

In response to increased mail theft and violence toward mail carriers, the Postal Inspection Service supplements its normal, day-to-day enforcement efforts by deploying additional law enforcement personnel and resources to high-crime areas. These SURGE (strategically utilized rapid group enforcement) operations are a key part of the continuing “Project Safe Delivery” campaign, launched with the Postal Service in 2023, and directs strategic activities to protect postal employees and the mail, prevent violent incidents, and increase education and awareness of mail-related crime.

Today’s postal inspectors also target criminals who use the U.S. Mail to traffic in drugs and other dangerous substances, especially the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl. The Postal Inspection Service and its national law enforcement partners have worked tirelessly to refine and evolve tactics to prevent drug trafficking.

Honoring Our Past, Inspiring our Future

As we move into the future, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service continues to adapt to an ever-changing criminal world. We are committed to utilizing new investigative techniques and technology to fight crime wherever it may lead. We’ve gone from investigating postal crime on horseback to surveilling mail thieves with high-tech drones, but our mission remains unchanged.

Like the surveyors and special agents who came before them, postal inspectors, Postal Police officers, and every member of our support staff are honored to serve and protect Postal Service employees, customers, and infrastructure as part of the nation’s oldest federal law enforcement agency: the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.